


if you have built castles in the air

by justfine



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22323079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justfine/pseuds/justfine
Summary: That morning, he had not gone in search of Dewey’s grave, but his aimless walking had brought him there. Something often did. It was a grieving, almost, but not for Dewey. For innocence, he thought, staring at the incline up which he had walked away, the bile rising in his throat again, the gunshot echoing in his ears. Not since he was a child had he squeezed his eyes shut so tightly, childish nightmares suddenly living, suddenly breathing, escaped from the closet of his imagination and standing in the flesh, masquerading as people he thought he’d known.Grizz rose to his feet. A part of him had died here, he thought mournfully, and he was never going to get it back.(Or, one day, Grizz finds a cabin in the woods.)
Relationships: Sam Eliot/Gareth "Grizz" Visser
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	if you have built castles in the air

So new was their world, much of it lacked a name.

When Dewey had died, they buried him in a grave in the centre of the clearing in which he’d been executed, blood in the soil as they dug. No one would bring him back to the plot of land by the church destined for the cemetery, so there he rested, alone in the woods, no epitaph, and no name. It was, perhaps, Grizz thought, the greatest indignity of them all; carried forth to meet his maker side by side with the tree rot. Grizz had, in his guilt, pilled a small collection of stones atop the raised earth, but they’d long since been displaced, scattered, like nature herself had shaken the evil from her woods.

Crouching in the shallow snow, hand on a stone, Grizz was not so sure that she had.

That morning, he had not gone in search of Dewey’s grave, but his aimless walking had brought him there. Something often did. It was a grieving, almost, but not for Dewey. For innocence, he thought, staring at the incline up which he had walked away, the bile rising in his throat again, the gunshot echoing in his ears. Not since he was a child had he squeezed his eyes shut so tightly, childish nightmares suddenly living, suddenly breathing, escaped from the closet of his imagination and standing in the flesh, masquerading as people he thought he’d known.

Grizz rose to his feet. A part of him had died here, he thought mournfully, and he was never going to get it back.

He continued walking into the woods, following the natural path carved between the trees. The frost that glittered had lost its shine under the cloudy afternoon sky, and the branches that once beckoned him now clawed in his direction, brittle as they broke against a gentle brush of his arm. He was faintly aware of a stinging on his cheek, numbed by the cold, and he suddenly found himself thinking silly, innocuous thoughts of Sam kissing it better.

The image disorientated him for a moment, a bonelessness sweeping through him. He reached out, hand skimming over flaking tree bark as he leaned against the trunk and laughed at himself.

And that was when he saw it.

Just beyond a mesh of branches, another clearing began. Unlike the one that harboured Dewey’s resting place, the space was wide and uncovered, the foliage giving way to dry dirt around—around a cabin.

Grizz stood, staring.

“What the fuck,” he muttered, putting a careless foot forward, not taking his eyes from the cabin as though it might disappear. He broke through the branches with a clumsy elbow and stepped out into the clearing. “What the fuck.”

It was a small cabin, ten by fifteen feet at most, with a chimney, barrel-like cistern and firewood shed just off to the side. The roof was made of neat shingles, but the walls slightly less so, almost as though, once upon a time, someone had hastily put them up in preparation for a winter not too dissimilar to this one, the boards still exposed beneath.

Only Grizz had walked these woods maybe a dozen times or more, and never before had he come across the little building standing in the open. It was as if it grew from the ground slowly and imperceptibly like the trees around it, finally exposed as the leaves withered and died.

*

That evening, he found Sam in the cafeteria. 

Sam, who smelt perpetually of baby sick and Becca’s perfume, was half-asleep as he ate, fork poking into a piece of ravioli as his other hand cradled his chin. He had dragged himself to the cafeteria on the same principles as Grizz had; not only to retain some semblance of normality, but as a quiet act of loyalty to Allie and Will in their absence.

Grizz took a seat opposite from Sam, dropping his tray down with a gentle clatter.

Sam moved as though the air around him had grown thicker than molasses, raising his head and acknowledging Grizz with a small twitch of his lips. He looked much the way he always did since Grizz returned; in a constant state of dishevelment, dark crescents bordering in his eyes. And yet there was a shine to him that Grizz couldn’t quite place, if it was fatherhood or some magnification of his own memory, setting Sam alight in a rosy glow to drown out the burden of their reality.

“Hey,” Grizz said, shuffling where he sat, “guess what I found?”

Sam followed the curl of Grizz’ fingers as they settled into a fist in front of him. _Guess_. He shrugged, gesturing for him to continue.

“I was in the woods,” he began, fingers twinkling past his face, “and I found this—” Grizz pursed his lips, spelling out _C-A-B-I-N_ in slow, calculated signs, “—cabin.”

At that, Sam sat forward, sparked into an alertness. “There are other people?” he asked.

“No,” Grizz said, then, “I don’t know.”

The truth was, he had looked and found nothing. Two windows had let him see inside, but there was nothing but a few wooden chairs, a table, a bed and a fireplace, all neatly displayed like a showroom but with no sign of life. He had tempered his own expectations back in the clearing, but he watched Sam deflate in front him, curling up tighter, hope pooling between them like blood. It was nauseating. 

“I guess it was always there I just—” Grizz sighed. “I guess I just didn’t see it before.”

Grizz dug his teeth into his bottom lip as he ducked down to make a start on his dinner, but he stopped again when he felt a touch to his arm. He set his eyes on where Sam’s hand rested, not holding, not grabbing, but placed. Hours of walking had left Grizz’ body cold, the chill trapped in his bones, but Sam was warm, and for a moment, Grizz let himself remember what it had been like to have his face cradled in those hands for the first time. He wanted to feel that again, he wanted—

“You’re a very good explorer,” Sam told him, “like Marco Polo.”

Grizz laughed, tucking his hair behind his ear only for it to fall back in place. “Well, I haven’t quite made it to China yet,” he said, accompanied by another laugh, and then by Sam’s. “Maybe one day. If it’s still out there somewhere.”

*

Grizz was in the garden when they came.

He woke early that morning, stirred by Sam’s movements in the dark. Grizz found him fast asleep at the kitchen table, head in his arms and a crease on his cheek from the wrinkles on the sleeve of his jacket. For some reason, he had apparently gotten fully dressed before slipping back into sleep. Jeans, t-shirt, coat. Even his trainers.

Grizz woke him up with a firm hand in his hair and a laugh. “I thought you’d decided to leave me in the middle of the night,” he said, palm of his hand coming up to rest flat against his elbow. “I was beginning to get a bit offended.”

It was a Sunday, deceptively soft and indulgent, so Grizz pressed Sam against the counter, kissing him long and slow as if they had all the time in the world. As if there was no world outside of this house, no responsibilities, no friends, no politics, no expectations or crying children. Only them, encased in something jittery and electric that wrapped itself around his lungs and heart, making it difficult to breathe. When he thought about it too hard, though, it unsettled him, so he didn’t, pulling himself back to reality with a firm press of his hand to Sam’s hip.

 _I’ll see you later_ , he signed.

Some sort silly giddiness carried him through the rest of the morning, even when he reached the garden and found the frost blankets thrown askew from the overnight wind. He was almost finished clipping the last of them into place when he heard a car pull up in the near distance. It didn’t bother him at first, not until he saw Harry walking up the path, Luke and Campbell following close behind.

“Hey, man,” Harry said, though Grizz found it difficult to shift his gaze from Luke. “Long time no see.”

“Can I help you with something?” he asked, cold as the air that gnawed at his cheeks.

“You can, in fact,” and it was Campbell that spoke this time. “Everyone’s beginning to get a little—tense around here recently, and we were just wondering when you and your little crew of explorers were going to get about starting up this farm of yours.” Campbell was smiling, tongue caught between his teeth. “So?”

Grizz stared between all of them, but when he spoke, he spoke to Luke. “There’s no chance of us tilling the land until March at least, the soil’s too hard and dry right now. Until then, we’ve been building up a tool shed out on the land, and a coop for the turkeys.” Grizz pursed his lips. “We shouldn’t be overfishing in the pond either. I had Blake put up a sign.”

“A tool shed isn’t going to feed people, Grizz,” Harry said.

“Yeah, no shit.” Finally, Grizz turned fully to Harry. “Look, the only thing that’s going to keep everyone alive until then is if we share, and if they don’t, they’re going to go hungry very quickly, and it’s not me they’re going to turn on before they do.”

Harry swallowed, taking a step back.

“Really?” Campbell said then, cutting the space between them. “Because I don’t think they’re going to put up with you playing hero forever either.”

At that, Grizz scrunched up his nose. This was their world, Bean had told him once, the sad, scary world that the universe had provided for them, and they were responsible to it. What he did, he did because he had to, because nobody else would. It was not to play hero. And who wanted to be a hero, anyway? Bellerophon was crippled as he fell from Pegasus. Diomedes spent eternity in sheets of flame. Cadmus never knew a day of peace.

No, Grizz thought, fuck being the hero.

“Just—just keep us updated, will you?” Harry said from over Campbell’s shoulder. “Please?”

Grizz’ jaw remained tight as he nodded. He thought about asking after Allie, after Will, but he warned himself to stay silent. If he were to ask him, it wouldn’t be in front of Campbell, who played him so painfully like some malevolent puppeteer that Grizz almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Harry walked away first, and then Campbell. Luke lingered, the indent of his knuckles clear through the pockets of his jacket, but soon he turned to follow as well.

“Nothing to say to me, Luke?” Grizz called after him, but he did not say a word.

*

The next time he went to the cabin, he did so deliberately.

Carved clear into his daydreams, the route was a simple one. He arrived just before midday, the sun splitting through the branches above and melting down the frost upon them. The cabin was much the same, icy cold water running from the roof and, on one occasion, landing square on Grizz’ face as he gave the door a tentative push.

Much to his surprise, it opened.

As he stepped over the threshold and into the cabin, Grizz could not ignore the strange sensation that began festering in his stomach, the stirring nostalgia for a place that he had never been. He turned in a small circle, bumping against a writing desk in the limited space, and was struck by the sudden thought that perhaps this place had been designed entirely for him. _Why do you think it’s about you?_ he heard then, his own voice bouncing between the four walls and sinking into the woodwork, and to that, he had no answer. 

He explored the cabin in touch, running a hand over the plastering and peeling the paintwork from a wooden chair with a gentle swipe of his thumb. He sat on the bed, felt the springs unyielding under his bodyweight, and rooted around by the fireplace, finding jugs, pots and the remnants of a fire long-since burned, the soot powdery between his fingers. It was only then, staring down at his hands, that he felt as though he had intruded.

Someone had been here before, he thought. They had once existed in this universe or still walked in another, and something about this newfound knowledge weighed heavy on his heart.

*

At six that evening, as he was making himself a cup of tea, the doorbell went. It was Gordie.

“Did you forget?” he asked. “About the meeting?”

In truth, Grizz had, but it mattered little.

A short while later Gwen and Bean arrived, and the two of them were quickly followed by Kelly, then Blake, then Mickey and Sam, who wore Eden around his front in a sling wrap. “Do I look stupid,” he had said in the privacy of the hallway, “or like a DILF?” to which Grizz did not dignify with an answer, but with a disapproving shake of the head and touch to the small of his back. 

Grizz knew he should be paying more attention, but it was difficult, and he found himself wondering why no one else seemed so distracted by Sam, why they did not go mad with the movements of his hands as he spoke, the glitter of his eyes, the burst of his laughter. In his trance, he dared not miss a single flight of his hands, committing them to memory, so that one day he might join him in an easy silence and never miss a thing.

“—Grizz?”

A mug rattled as Grizz elbow slipped against the table. Mercifully, Eden didn’t stir.

“Huh?”

“Bean was saying everyone’s starting to get a bit restless about what’s happening with Will and Allie,” Gordie said, and only then did he recognise the tension in the air, pressing down heavy on them all. “They’re going to be pushed into a decision soon.”

“Not until we deal with the food situation,” he said firmly, and he almost made himself believe it. “I mean, that’s a bit more of a pressing issue, right?”

At that, Grizz looked at Bean, who only shrugged.

After the first time, Grizz knew they’d set a precedent. People wanted justice, and they wanted it quickly. Even quicker on increasingly empty stomachs, it seemed, or at least they needed an avenue down which they could vent their frustrations. Desperation, after all, had the habit of making people unkind, unempathetic, fettering them to self-destruction as the options decreased and it seemed their problems only slept in death.

No one’s hungry when they’re dead, Grizz supposed.

“I told them we’d fucking live to regret letting Campbell go,” Sam said then, and Grizz didn’t fail to notice the shake in his hands, in his voice. “We had him, and now we—”

“Allie was right, though, Sam, we can’t just keep people locked up because we’re scared of them,” Gordie interjected, signing along to his own words.

“Well I’m more than scared,” he said, barely in a whisper.

He absentmindedly cradled Eden’s head a little closer to his chest as Grizz reached for his own, feeling everything inside of him shatter. He had known, of course. He had known how Campbell terrified Sam, and he had accepted it, written it off as a fact of the matter without constructing the reality. Life was Hell for him, and with a baby, the world had aligned a catalogue of horrors around him that Grizz couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Right then, he would have told Sam everything was going to be alright, if only he’d believed it.

*

“You know,” Gwen began, “I’m surprised we’ve even made it this far.”

Sat up on the kitchen counter, she turned her head to blow smoke out of the open window. It let in a draft, but Grizz paid it no mind as he stretched out a hand to take the joint she offered, less concerned about the smell. It wasn’t like his parents were going to walk through the front door and give him into trouble for it, no matter how much he longed for them to.

He didn’t think about his parents very often, but only because it was easier that way. On the occasions that he did, he recalled his father’s devotion to his mother, his passive tenderness that resembled love more than anything she had ever shown him. It seemed a future he was destined to follow for a while; to be with someone for the sake of not being alone, for the sake of stability over happiness. But the edges of his tiny world grew as he got older, life no longer limited to the horizon beyond his bedroom window. He would fall in love, he vowed.

He would fall in love a hundred times and not regret any of it. 

“Yeah,” Grizz said, “we’ve had a good run.”

*

On the third attempt, the fire finally lit.

Crouched before it, Grizz held his hands to the open flame, feeling the rush of heat that washed away the cold and settled in his bones. In the wintry darkness it threw a ghoulish glow, but Grizz liked it, marveling in the way the plaster on the walls dyed orange and all the little features of the room came alive, thawed back to life from their slumber.

He had been at the farm that day, constructing fences. His hands were sore, battered by wood and wire, and his feet ached horribly. He can’t remember walking all the way back out into the woods, doesn’t think he could’ve done it if he had done so consciously, and yet there he was. There he always tended to be. Cooped up in the middle of the woods, there was no one that could find him, talk to him, ask him any questions about how they were going to survive any more of this.

There he was alone, and it was the single most precious pleasure in his life.

Mostly, he came to read. When the fire embers finally burned their brilliant yellow, he would retreat to the bed, wrestle off his boots and undo his hair tie before settling down. That night, his reading came in the form of Faulkner’s _As I Lay Dying,_ picked up by Sam at the library and given to him just days before, a return-date stamped neatly at the front. Grizz had laughed, promising it would not be returned overdue.

He read, he slept, he woke up in the morning. The fire had died but he had not, and for that he was learning to be thankful.

It was then, just as he was tucking his trousers back into his socks, that he thought about staying. There was nowhere to be today, he thought, nobody to see. There was enough food and water in his bag to keep him going and enough pages in his book to keep him entertained. He looked down at where the book rested by his foot, chewing down on the inner walls of his cheek, and picked it up, leaned back and found the page on which he’d left off.

No, he thought, there was no harm in one more day.

*

“I couldn’t find you yesterday,” Sam told him the following afternoon.

His voice carried without accusation along the top of his skin, hand moving over his chest. Grizz watched it with a sated curiosity, fingers tracing up and down from the back of his hand to his arm, a delicate touch so as not to impede the flight of his hand.

“I was out in the woods again,” he said, and it was the truth, but maybe not the whole truth.

Regardless, Sam didn’t seem to mind. “And have you found China yet?” he asked, tilting his head against Grizz’ arm with a smile.

Grizz laughed. “Not yet,” he told him.

Sam moved then, leaning forward as though to catch his laughter between his own lips, sealing it off between them with a kiss. Grizz could feel the shake of their shared giggle against his chest. It was one of those boring, trivial moments in which nothing seemed to happen, but whose place in his memory was irreplaceable all the same. He imagined, perhaps, that it might be the last thing he would see before died, the soft, easy pinnacle of his happiness that death itself could not touch as he carried it with him.

Above him, Sam moved, sitting back on his hips. Grizz rested his hands on his thighs.

“You know,” he began, “I read this book once, about this guy that was inspired by this emperor dude Akbar the Great, who built a palace filled with new-born kids that were raised by mutes. It was supposed to, like, show if language was innate or acquired—and it was acquired, because the kids didn’t talk, and everyone got so mad because their faith in the innateness of speech had been undermined.”

Sam rubbed slow, smooth circles into the skin of Grizz’ stomach. “I wouldn’t have missed out on much then,” he said.

“That’s the thing. When this dude tried it with his own kids, like, locking them away and shit, they formed their own language. Like, they sang to each other in a language he didn’t understand, just the two of them. Until they died.”

His hands turned before him with his last word. Morbidly, he had learnt this sign quickly, remembering Sam’s quiet _it’s like turning in your grave_ with startling clarity. He figured it would come in handy.

“So,” Sam said, eyebrow quirked, “you want me to sing?”

“No,” he groaned in mock annoyance, slapping a hand down on his thigh, then smoothing over it with a flat palm. “I just think you’re amazing.”

For a moment, Sam looked startled, bashful, but then his features levelled out into a rosy joy that creeped red down his neck and chest. From beneath him, Grizz admired the view, felt something wholesome burst and bloom in his own chest as he lazily pushed his hands up Sam’s thighs, fingers sneaking beneath the legs of his boxers. It wasn’t a sensual touch, because Grizz sensed the goodbye in the air like one might sense thunder rolling over the hills, but an intimate one. It was the kind of intimacy that hadn’t seemed possible in this place before, something he’d have to travel a million miles to find.

And maybe he had. Maybe this world coexisted with the other and one day they would travel between the two, long after he was gone, and everything would make sense, and all would be well.

*

“—and it’s important to remember that God won’t always answer our prayers or bless the righteous.” Helena stopped, looking around. “Not in this life at least. The Book of Job tells us not to waste too much time on working out why, but encourages us to hold on to God as we struggle with our suffering until the day we hear Him again.”

Grizz shifted where he stood against the pillar, watching the ripple of movement along the pews as the service ended. Not many had shown, though they rarely did. Despite Helena’s preaching, despite Grizz’ assumption that more of them might turn to faith in a time like this, as history had tended to suggest, it had been the opposite. Faith had gone, dissipating with the harmony in their little society. And yet Helena remained resolute, undeterred, standing before dwindling numbers as though no one had ever left.

“Beautiful service,” Campbell said as he paused by the door, “don’t you think?”

Stiff-jawed and tall, Grizz offered him no response but for a small, sad smile where Elle was hooked to his side. He felt his stomach curl with the fingers Campbell ran through her hair as they walked away.

Jason and Clark were the next to pass him by, but both said nothing—not until Grizz heard a short, “Grizz, man, I—” and turned around, eyes settling where Clark had stopped under the arch, arm stretched out in his direction. His mouth hung ajar, twitching around the right thing to say but never quite settling. He sighed, turning under the hand Jason placed on his shoulder to lead him away, following closely behind Lexie.

“They miss you, you know,” Helena’s voice carried over the empty hall. “I think they’re a little lost without you.” She paused. “Luke, too.”

“Well, they’re big boys and this isn’t football,” Grizz replied, pushing himself from the pillar and taking a seat in the backmost pew. “They don’t need me calling the plays for them anymore.”

Helena sat in the pew across from him.

“There was always more to it than that, Grizz,” she said.

Grizz swallowed because, yeah, it was true. He had been honest about wanting to leave them behind after he graduated, but he’d been equally as honest about loving them too. They were his boys—or, well, the used to be. Ever since he’d returned, they’d spoken only once, when he’d tried to figure out what had happened while he’d been away and only been met by bullshit. It seemed Luke barely convinced himself as he spoke, never mind Grizz.

“I know,” he said, “but I’m really sorry, Helena, this can’t be on me.”

“Grizz—”

“Come on, you know it as well as I do it’s all a load of shit,” he said, “but everyone’s too shit scared of Campbell to do anything about it.” His voice softened as he spoke. “And we’ll probably all starve soon anyway so what’s point,” he finished, eyes wandering to the front of the church, to the altar where they’d laid Grace’s body out, held Cassandra’s funeral and sentenced Dewey to death.

He curled his hand around the pew in front of him.

“Do you really think that?” Helena asked.

Grizz turned to her, a slight wobble to his lip. “I don’t know,” he said, but he knew all too well.

*

In the absence of a mirror, he shaved by touch.

It was uncomfortable, the drag of the razor down his throat, over his jaw, face lathered and dampened with nothing more than a wet cloth. He cut his cupid’s bow and bled into the cracks of his lips, licking away the evidence and tasting like pennies. Not bad, all things considered, he thought, smoothing a hand over his face. He’d certainly done more damage in the past.

Today was the fourth day.

It was a fourth day of silence, a fourth day of solitude. Seconds and minutes and hours had become obsolete in his isolation, replaced by the rise and fall of the sun. In the cradle of winter, the days were kindly short, but the nights bitterly long, stretching endless and eerie as he watched from the window now adorned with makeshift curtains, the woods around him still. It scared him, but no more than it had done on their earlier exploration, or every time he’d gone camping before. 

Of course, he was alone now, and nobody knew where. If he died here, he’d die alone, left to rot back to nature long before anyone found him. It was—unpleasant, but not scary. After all, he’d died alone in his dreams a thousand times or more, and it didn’t much scare him anymore.

*

“Oh,” Becca said from where she peered behind the door, “hey, Grizz.”

“Hi, Becca,” he said, awkwardly rocking back and forth on his heels. “I just wanted to—”

“Do you want to come inside?” she asked before he could finish. “It’s a little cold out,” she added, pulling her cardigan tighter around her shoulders. “Don’t want to let all the heat out the house.”

It was lack of a better excuse that sent him forward, stepping over the threshold and brushing past Becca into the hallway. He had been there before, felt the wall against his back as Sam kissed him up against it while Becca slept upstairs. A hot thread of guilt wrapped around his neck like a noose, cutting off the air flow to his lungs, the blood to his brain. Despite himself, despite what he really knew, he couldn’t help but feel like some masochistic mistress, suddenly surrounding himself in everything he knew he could never have.

“I heard you’d been gone for a few days,” Becca said as she led him into the living-room. “Sam’s been worried, says everything falls apart when you’re not here.” Grizz watched her sit down on the couch, a bassinet right before her. She smiled up at him. “He’s not wrong. Sit?”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, perching down on the edge of the couch and placing the basket he held by his side. “I think they’d manage without me. Where’s Sam?”

“At the library,” she answered. “Gordie and Bean are starting to give farming lessons in the church in the next few weeks, so Sam’s helping them research, scanning pictures and stuff.”

“Oh.”

“I think they brought it up at the meeting you missed.” And then it was Becca’s turn to ask a question. “What’s in the basket?”

“It’s just, erh, just some carrots, onions, leeks, that sort of stuff, from the garden,” he said. “And some jam I made from berries I found in the woods. It’s, uh, for you guys. Sam—he helped me out a lot in the garden, so I thought it was only fair that—with Eden and all—you know…” He tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, laughing at himself. “I just wanted to say thank you to him.”

Becca reaches over, planting a hand on his knee. “You’re a blessing,” she told him and pulled back.

“Yeah, uh, how’s Eden?” he asked, diverting the attention from himself.

“Kelly said she’s doing great, gaining enough weight, growing well.” Becca moved as she spoke, standing to reach into the bassinet and pick up Eden. Her little arms and legs jerked around, still out of her control but somewhat graceful. “Aren’t you, baby?” she cooed, pressing her nose to Eden’s cheek. “Mama’s perfect girl.”

“She’s—she’s beautiful,” he said.

“I could just stare at her all day,” Becca told him, a gentle giddiness in her voice. “Do you wanna hold her?”

He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t, because everything was so fucked already, everything was so complicated, and he didn’t need this. Didn’t need the illusion that he was somehow a part of this, that one day he could be.

And yet he did. He nodded, he smiled, he let Becca place Eden in his arms. He kept still, muscles locked in place in a new, rushing sense of fear. She was so small—and looked so much smaller in his arms, he faintly registered Becca clucking by his side—and delicate despite the tiny fist she waved in the air, eyes opened to the world, taking it all in. It must be terrifying, he thought, like discovering yourself in a new universe and struggling to find out how to live again.

“She’s perfect,” he whispered.

It was only as he stepped back into the cold air of the outside world, stilted goodbye lingering behind him, that he felt the icy, wet trace of tears on his cheeks. For who or what they had fallen for, he wasn’t quite sure.

*

In Aramaic, they called it Akeldama.

It was said, after kissing Jesus in the garden, Judas took his payment of thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests that had paid him and threw it down in the temple. They took it, but as it was the price of blood, they couldn’t lawfully put it into the treasury. So instead, they took counsel, and afterwards, they bought with it a potter’s field to bury the strangers of Jerusalem. Cast the silver to the potter in the house of the Lord, Zechariah had prophesied, and they did.

To them, it was the Field of Blood—although whose blood, Grizz wasn’t sure. The blood of Jesus was spilt for the money to buy the field, but it was Judas that would bleed into the earth, blood mixing with clay, the landscape stained red forever. 

Sometimes, Grizz dreamt of it. He dreamt of the nameless place they had buried Dewey and watched the earth turn red, as if the forest floor had been replaced by clay and the trees replaced by unquenchable fire. It often woke him with a start, soaked in fear and guilty as sin. Grizz wasn’t a religious man, but he pulled himself from his bed, out of the cabin and through the woods, stopping only when he found the unmarked grave.

There, he sank to his knees, and he cried without sound.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm hrrybnghm on tumblr if you wanna idk form a season two prayer circle or sumthin


End file.
